


Immolation

by bcbdrums



Category: Kim Possible (Cartoon)
Genre: Alcohol, Angst, Character Death, F/M, Gen, Heavy Angst, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Pining, Suicide, Suicide Notes, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-13
Updated: 2021-01-13
Packaged: 2021-03-17 16:07:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28727829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bcbdrums/pseuds/bcbdrums
Summary: The reason she hadn't moved on was for the lack of one thing in every photo, article, and broadcast about the blue former villain who had saved the world: he was always alone. Even the candids taken by paparazzi that she would find in the trash magazines she had specially delivered only ever showed him having breakfast alone at a sidewalk cafe, or seated alone in an audience as he waited to accept an award.Why hadn't he met someone and settled down already?
Relationships: Dr. Drakken & Shego (Kim Possible), Dr. Drakken/Shego (Kim Possible)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 10





	Immolation

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: This is a direct sequel to "[Torment](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25643755)." You technically don't have to read it to get this one, but it will make a lot more sense and the impact will be greater.
> 
> I'm heavily depressed, so you get heavy angst. (Gothicthundra, don't read this one...)

Immolation

Shego ran the dampened washcloth over the smooth, polished surface of the bar and stared at the grains of wood beneath. She nearly had them memorized, for how many times she'd run the cloth over them to wipe away the condensation left by the rims of drinking glasses. She always tried to find vague shapes in their patterns; faces and objects and sometimes familiar ocean waves. She didn't have anything else to do with her days, after all.

The small wall-mounted television in the corner continued to play news from the local channel, and after three years she could finally understand the Spanish of the broadcast. She'd picked up the local slang faster by necessity, since she couldn't use her powers to protect herself from the type of crowd the bar attracted. It was ironic, for its nearness to the Caribbean, but the slums of El Salvador had been the perfect place to hide. She easily translated the broadcast into the more comfortable English:

 _"...And here is Dr. Drakken only days ago, unveiling his latest innovation at the world's largest scientific conference in Berlin..."_ the voice from the TV cut through the minimal noise at the late hour in the bar.

A soft smile came to Shego's face. And then suddenly her vision was filled with the large form of a dark-skinned man wearing a t-shirt that had seen too many years, and with a face that hadn't seen a razor in weeks.

"Venga, chica. Bailar conmigo."

Shego stepped back from the strong scent of alcohol and scowled at the man, a regular at the establishment, but one who never quite took the hint. Especially not when he had had too many.

"Raquel?" came the accented voice of Esteban, her boss and the owner of the place, from across the room where he was wiping down tables and stacking chairs for closing.

She leaned around the offensive man to merely smirk at her boss knowingly in return. He grimaced slightly, no doubt wondering how much of a mess there would be to clean after she was finished with the brute.

Truthfully, she didn't always reject the men who asked her to dance. Whenever she'd had a few shots it was easier to say yes, and she enjoyed closing her eyes and moving to the rhythm of the music, and imagining herself in a different place. But it would always end the moment any of them tried to lay a hand on her...

She couldn't cross that line. There was only one set of hands she ever wanted to touch her, and they never would. Allowing herself to indulge once and pretend with anyone else would open the gate to far worse sins than her most definitely out of control drinking, and she didn't want to deal with the ramifications of heading down that path.

She still wasn't sure when she'd fallen in love with Drakken. She'd certainly been in love with him before she left, but she'd only realized the fact while in her self-imposed exile, when all she could think about was him.

Numerous magazines and newspapers were delivered to the tiny room she rented above the bar, but not of the variety she'd used to get. Now it was all science periodicals, and world news... And her wall was adorned with newspaper cutouts with his familiar, confident grin. The only reason she watched the news at all was for word of him.

She was pathetic.

Her 'clean break' as she'd hoped to make it seemed to have worked for him. He was finding the success she knew he would as soon as she was out of the picture, no longer holding him back. She knew that would have been the result had she stayed, making him question his sudden yearning for 'good.' Less for good, she knew of course, and more for the recognition and honor his genius rightly deserved. She wouldn't have said that years ago, but with the new understanding she had of her feelings...

She couldn't have stayed. He would have denied himself for her. And she refused to let herself think it was because his feelings were deeper too. No, that wasn't possible. It had been made abundantly clear to her over their four years as partners in crime that he simply didn't think of her that way. She was little more than an asset and a comfort; a listening ear for his endless dronings and rantings, easily replaced.

So she had left a note on her pillow one day after painfully listening to him describe the amazing job offers he had received, and simply vanished. She knew he would come looking for her, as he always did because 'he needed her,' so she had made herself impossible to find. She'd not hardly used her powers in three years, and she'd managed to convinced the locals in the high-poverty, high-crime rate slums she'd hidden in that her skin color was due to something between genetics and illness.

'Shego' was gone.

Now she was Raquel, the barmaid who drank too much, wouldn't let anyone get close, and who had a strange obsession with science magazines. Esteban and others had tried to get her to talk about herself, or her apparent science interest for awhile, but they'd finally taken the hint that she was out there in the middle of nowhere, at one of the only respectable establishments in those slums, to make sure know one ever knew her story.

Shego waited until Esteban wasn't looking, and then she lifted her hand above the leering man's head as his greasy fingers reached across the bar for her, and she let him have just enough of a pressure blast from her glow to knock him out. When the man's large, dead-weight hit the floor, her boss turned with a start.

"Ai ai ai, Raquel! Someday I will see how you accomplish that."

Shego merely smirked as her eyes shifted back to the television. It was a simple, lonely life... One that she might leave someday to pursue other interests. 'Shego' as the world had known her could probably never return, after her world-saving ventures with Drakken. She wouldn't want to put his career at risk in any way. But living from day to day and drink to drink, with only her periodicals and the TV to briefly soothe the ache in her heart wasn't plausible. She needed to move on.

The reason she hadn't was for the lack of one thing in every photo, article, and broadcast about the blue former villain who had saved the world: he was always alone. Even the candids taken by paparazzi that she would find in the trash magazines she had specially delivered only ever showed him having breakfast alone at a sidewalk cafe, or seated alone in an audience as he waited to accept an award.

Why hadn't he met someone and settled down already?

That was the last piece... That was what was missing. When Drakken finally had a woman on his arm, and his happiness was complete...then she could risk moving out into the world and being seen again. If he had someone else, he most definitely wouldn't need her. And she wouldn't have to face up to the fact of possibly seeing him again, with the feelings she'd been harboring for too many years that simply refused to die.

_"...It has been confirmed to have been a suicide now, as the note was leaked to the press by a source who wishes to remain anonymous from within Japanese Intelligence..."_

Shego's attention snapped to the television, where now a years-old photograph of Drakken at the UN, wearing his medal, was displayed in the corner of the screen as the Spanish news anchor continued to read the copy.

_"The note was addressed to fellow-hero Kim Possible, and the text reads: 'I can't figure out what I did wrong. I can't live without her anymore. I'm sorry.' The note was not signed, but handwriting analysis easily showed it to be in the script of Dr. Drakken."_

Shego felt the world spinning around her as her vision seemed to spin in the opposite direction. Her head swam and ached all at once, and she could see bright spots dancing in front of her eyes even as her view darkened. She stumbled forward to lean against the bar as she struggled to listen to the television.

_"And the world remains in shock, one week from the date the acclaimed scientist took his life by jumping from the roof of the Osaka World Trade Center. We will keep you updated with more details as the story continues to unfold. This is Paola Ramos, reporting."_

Shego's eyes fell back to the wood grain of the bar, dotted now with rainbow lights as she replayed the words over and over in her mind.

_Dead? Suicide?_

It couldn't be true... And if for an entire week, why hadn't she heard anything yet?

And worse... What had his...his suicide note, meant?

 _"I can't live without her anymore,"_ it had read.

_He couldn't... He didn't... He wouldn't...mean me?_

Shego felt like she might throw up, and she let herself sink to the floor behind the bar until her cheek was pressed down against the cool tiles of the filthy floor.

_He can't be dead... He can't._

She lay there, her breaths coming too quickly, until a voice broke through her racing, panicked thoughts.

"Raquel! ¿Qué pasa?"

She peered upward and let Esteban take her hand and help her to a seated position.

"Phone..." she managed to choke out, her throat strangely tight.

"What? But what has happened?"

"Phone..." she said, and started slowly crawling around the bar, her vision still swimming. She couldn't use Esteban's phone... But, the man she had dropped earlier...

She found the unconscious man and with hardly a grimace she fumbled in his pockets until finding his mobile phone, and then leaned back against the bar as she began dialing a long-memorized number. She realized as the phone rang that she didn't know if the number would be the same after so long, but that thought was broken by Esteban kneeling in front of her.

"Are you calling 911?" he asked, his dark eyes wide and worried as he studied her frantically. But then, the phone connected.

 _"Hello?"_ the familiar voice said through the line.

Shego suddenly realized, she had only ever called the girl 'Princess' or 'Pumpkin' or 'Kimmie,' and wasn't sure how to address the now young woman and for a brief time, ally.

"Kim..." she finally settled on, the name leaving her throat hoarsely.

 _"Yes? Who is...?"_ A familiar gasp sounded through the phone. _"Shego?"_

"Drakken..." was her one-word answer as suddenly tears began filling her eyes. "Drakken's note."

_"Where have you been!? Where are you? We looked for you for over a year!"_

"Did that note... Was it real? Is he...is he really...dead?" she asked, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand before digging her fingers tightly into her side as her hands started to shake.

 _"...Yes,"_ Kim answered with a sigh, _"he's gone."_

Shego felt even more of the world around her fall away somehow. She could still see Esteban's scuffed tennis shoes and his knees where he knelt in front of her, and she could even see the leg of the collapsed man on her other side. But it was all through a dizzying haze.

"The note I heard them read on the news. Did he...did he mean me?"

_"...Of course he did. Shego, are you okay? Where you have you been?"_

"No..." Shego breathed, even as she lowered the phone from her ear despite Kim's continued questions. She almost forgot herself and ignited her hand, but instead she flipped the phone closed and dropped it on the ground.

Esteban helped her to her feet again, and he let out a small yelp of surprise as her heel came down hard on the phone.

"Ai, Raquel! What if he finds out?" he said worriedly, looking at the unconscious drunkard.

Shego didn't answer as she leaned on the bar and continued grinding the phone down to nothing, and then with her vision still dotted with color she stumbled back behind the bar. Her shaking hands reached out to familiar places until she found bottles of tequila, and then with four clutched in her arms she turned to head toward the stairs and her small rented room.

"Ai, Raquel, that is too much! That is too much!"

Shego ignored Esteban's words as she moved numbly to her room, pushing through the door and stumbling against the bed, all but one of the bottles of alcohol falling from her grasp. She spun around, and after shoving the door closed she melted the lock with her glow. Then she fell back to sit on her narrow, uncomfortable mattress as she fumbled with the lid of the tequila bottle.

She looked around at her walls, with their newspaper clippings and magazine cutouts of photos and articles about Drakken's successes. Tears fell from her eyes anew as she brought the bottle to her lips and soon felt her throat burn nearly as badly as her eyes. And the words of Drakken's note played through her mind repeatedly, her every thought and excuse for the past three years dissolving into torment.

* * *

The next day, Esteban stood nervously outside the door that Kim Possible and Ron Stoppable were breaking into, explaining about the night before and the bizarre behavior from his employee. Of course, Shego's destruction of the mobile phone hadn't been quick enough to block Wade Load's trace.

When the trio finally pushed the door open, three pairs of worried eyes went wide before the faces fell to sadness and horror.

"Aaiiii, Raquel, ¿por qué? ¿Por qué, mi lucecita, por qué?"

Kim's eyes lit upon the one piece of paper not tacked to the walls, having fallen from the bed where it had previously been held in the occupant's hand. Her breath caught as she picked it up and together the trio read the sloppily scrawled words, the bartender sobbing over the shoulders of the two younger people.

_"I didn't want to hold him back. I just wanted him to be happy."_

* * *

_"...And broadcasting live from Osaka Prefecture, a tragic tale of unrequited love as we bring you the public funeral of acclaimed world heroes, Dr. Drakken and Shego."_


End file.
